Okay, so I know I posted this up in the wakeboarding forum, and some of you may have seen it there, but all that I got was the typical "great video" and "great riding," with one or two "good editing"s mixed in.

I didn't really get any solid critiquing on the editing, and camera work in general, and I'd like to hear some. Be as brutal as necessary. Frankly, a lot of the stuff in the video I dislike a lot. I'm still not satisfied with it, and there are blurred out shots that I had to use because of extremely limited footage. It's driving me nuts, and as much as I like hearing that people like the vid (who doesn't enjoy hearing something like that?), I'd like some opinions on my real first shots at editing wakeboarding video.

Slider Day 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwOyzQtLQQ4I have no excuse for the shoddy editing of this one. It's just bad. Plus, for some reason, the internet upload knocked the timing off of the transition points, since they match up on the version of it I watch from my computer... A little odd, but whatever.

Like I said, be brutal, be brutal as hell. I want to hear it, since I don't get semiprofessional/professional opinions from anyone that I know who watches these.

Oh, and if you click on the watch in high quality just below the play count, it looks a ton better, which should help any critiquing, since that's more of what it looks like.

as far as the gauntlet trailer goes, your definitely on the right path.

There are little inconsistencies you could tighten up that would give it that polished feel.

An example is where you introduce paul minter and the transition to his introduction clips the corners off of the shot. It would be better to manually key frame everything in that to make your own custom transition.

Another example is your introduction, the "nick schrein" text randomly show up a little late. This was something that was glaringly noticeable to me.

As far as polishing the look and feel, try staying consistent with the way you handle things. For instance here is what I would have changed.

I like how you brought in Joel Wagner....BUT....I don't like how there was a black circle wiping on and a white circle wiping off. Instead I would introduce everybody with the white circle wiping on but each from a different corner or side. From there I would use a less in your face transition(dissolve) taking that scene off and into more of that riders footage. That way everybody was introduced with a sort of theme to it all. After the circle wiped on their name along with the clip you chose for them, I would give them all a slight grow and rotation with a light effect such as a lens flare or glow behind the clip and text so it really pops the clip and text out as they are growing and rotating giving the scene more depth. Subtlety is the key with the grows and rotates though so definitely don't overdo it.

You seem to have the B-ROLL down. I was impressed with some of the shots. Some of the simplest things can look really good. I like the shot with the board falling onto the grass in slow motion. Nicely done. I also like the three boats going across screen but felt it could have been used a little better. Maybe get it timed to where they enter the shot and leave the shot completely. I think Black and White would have definitely made that shot work better too.

Yeah dude, it was like, everyone just threw backrolls for the only inverts in the video, minus the wagners and the occasional scarecrow.

I actually just picked up a ton of footy of the wagners riding that I wish I had when I was finishing up the trailer, but oh well. You're right about how sometimes the simplest stuff seems the most awesome. Like, despite the fact that most of that stuff was from in-boat camera angles, it still came out looking decent, I was pretty happy with that.

I'm still working on figuring out how all of the effects in Sony Vegas 8 work. A lot of them have a ton of tweaking that you can do that changes the entire thing. For some reason on the Joel Wagner transition, I couldn't get it to get rid of the white or whatnot, and it was just a complete pain in the arse. Looking back on it, you're probably right about making the transitions stick along one major theme, but at the time I was thinking "AVOID REPETITION!" when making the transitions for the rider intros. The Paul Minter thing was just a mistake that I kept thinking about fixing but wound up just leaving there. For whatever reason, I couldn't get it to come in above the frame, and for some other reason I dodged shrinking the thing down in size so that it all did fit. Laziness on my part I guess.

Another thing that I notice every time that I watch it though is the Joel Wagner with a leaf at the beginning when I was showing clips of the riders. I could have SWORN that I fixed that so that it filled the entire screen instead of still being shrunk down in size. It was kind of frustrating when I finished the 13 hour render of the video in HD to find that it wasn't working properly... Go figure.

Oh jeez, I just watched the Nick Schrein thing, and man, you're dead on. That looks like sheit. I don't know how I messed that up... Dur... I didn't even notice it, but then again, by that point I had gone over the entire trailer like, 700 times for different edits and such, so I was probably getting complacent with it.

And the three boats were actually at full speed if I remember correctly. I'll have to double check on that and see if it was actually slowed down at all, in which case I could do what you're suggesting, but I don't think it was possible to time that right with the song.

Thanks a TON for the suggestions and critiquing. The more I have people tell me what I was doing from an objective perspective, the more I'm able to look at it from an outside view and fix glaring mistakes/polish it up more.

I want to start off by saying that I enjoyed the overall theme and feel of the video. I agree with some of Nate-O's advice on the introduction consistency to create a more unified video.

During the B-roll (which for the most part was on-point) I liked the "themed" sections (such as the dock starts). That kept the video flowing. One note I have is on the clip where you're shooting from behind the board on the rack and the rider comes into frame right before you cut. I would love to see more of the rider in this shot because it is an inspiring angle.

Another critique that I have,(and is probably only coming from me because I've watched The Truth a number of times) is the slow motion of the wakeboard hitting the ground. Now I know that Nate-O liked the shot, but for me it took away from the other creative and original stuff(i.e. - behind-rack angle, rider holding camera and showing handle, three-boat "parade" shot) you had in your video, just because it so closely mimicked the shots in The Truth at the beginning of the Shane/Shawn split section. I'm not saying that you copied the shots, but that's just what hit me when I saw that clip.

But that's my minor input, and your vision and originality definitely overshadowed anything that my picky eye jumped at. This trailer really is awesome, and I love the different stuff that you gave us in a wakeboard short. I admire what you are doing and I'd love to catch a copy of Gauntlet when it hits the Buywake shelves . I hope my review was worth your precious time away from the editing station. Good luck and Peace out.

Yeah, just after I had finished the trailer, I noticed how similar that specific shot was to shanes board being thrown on the ground. The entire time I kind of had the image of the watson spinning in the air in slo-mo in mind, and was just playing around with specific kinds of shots to see what I could get, and it came out well so I used it. After I watched the Shane/Shawn split, I was like "Oh crap, that's identical to the shane board dropping! NOOO!" But by that point, that specific shot had been a pretty solid staple in the equipment themed section that I didn't want to drop it, since there would be no way for me to get another one like it. Although, I did just come up with a really sick shot the other day that would have been a great replacement had I had it at the time. Oh well. Thanks for the input Adam. I was thinking the exact same thing about that board dropping shot.

I got bored and did this one. Minus the fact that the same backside 1 out of the wake was used twice in the video, I'd love to get some opinions on this short as well. Won't be in the video because of copyright issues, but I figured a low res internet vid wouldn't be that bad when it comes to that...

Oh, and everything's from in the boat. They live 45 minutes by water from me, so chaseboating is out of the question until I can somehow pull some gasoline out of my arse.